


Waiting

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Year 0 (Stand Still Stay Silent), prologue characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 03:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13449213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: Two weeks.Árni Reynisson has to wait two weeks in quarantine before he can be discharged and allowed back into Iceland.  He resolves to learn how to raise sheep.





	Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> This serves as my contribution for the letter W in the SSSS Alphabet Challenge.

Jón held up two fingers to the window. _Two weeks. _He marked the first X onto the card attached to the clipboard on the door.__

The newest detainee, Árni Reynisson, waved back. “Thanks, I really appreciate it,” he said to Jón, before flopping back onto the bed. Jón moved on to check on his other charges in the quarantine area of the sick bay.

After three months, Jón knew the protocol rather well by now. The medical staff in Spain where Patients 1-11 had been taken had worked out that the deadly contagious illness had a two-week incubation period, mostly calculated as their own staff were struck down. The Icelandic government had accordingly set a two-week quarantine for any Icelandic citizens wishing to return through Iceland’s closed borders. For non-Icelandic citizens, there was no corresponding quarantine; there was simply no entry permitted, under any circumstances. The coast guard, normally trained to carry out rescues at sea and other such benign duties, was given orders to ‘turn back’ any foreign vessels entering Icelandic waters. Inquiries in later years couldn’t find evidence documenting exactly when ‘turning back’ foreign vessels changed to destroying them, but during these first horrible months after the imposition of the border closure, many refugees were lost to patrolling gunships such as the Thor.

Jón had had to quarantine several of the Þor’s crew over the last month for return to Iceland. For some, the distress of their families back ashore compelled them to ask for discharge, and for others such as Árni, the stress of guarding Iceland’s waters started to bite. Medical mate Pétur had been assigned by the Chief Officer to assess any crew for signs of the illness, and unofficially to assess their fitness to continue in their roles.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Árni lay back upon the mattress in his cell. He could still hear the echo of the guns in his mind, the guns that had wiped out a small boat of refugees. _Still waving,_ the Chief Officer had said. Árni had been the one to alert them to the boat’s presence, when they showed up as a disembodied blip on his scanner. A disembodied blip that turned out to contain many bodies, real people, waving happily at the big boat come to rescue them from the wintry North Atlantic, even as the Thor brought her guns to bear upon them. His relief in being discharged from his onerous duties was stronger than his concern about the notes about his mental health that Pétur had put in his file. None of that mattered now, he was going to get out of here.

He told himself he was going to find some little hamlet somewhere back in Iceland and learn how to raise sheep, and forget all about the outside world. After a moment he thought again, and decided that he would not forget about the outside world after all, he would keep it in mind enough to tell his children and his children’s children why they should never ever leave Iceland.

He fell asleep quickly that night, while trying to recall everything he had ever learned about sheep. He heard guns going off in his dreams, all night long, which scared the sheep and made them run from the deformed crew he seemed to have become a part of.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Two. Árni woke with a start, and took a long second trying to figure out where he was. Relief flooded through him as he remembered; he was in quarantine in the sick bay, he was going home. More relief flooded out of him when he realised he had his own ensuite toilet, which he didn’t have to share with his whole barracks pod. With all this time on his hands, he’d surely have enough time to read up on everything he would need to know about keeping sheep. He stood up to go down to the ship’s tiny rec room, which housed its library as well as some ancient video games and outdated DVDs. His cell door was locked on the inside. Well of course it is, he thought to himself.

He had no way of telling the time, or when breakfast would be coming, or any of his own things. He sat back on the bed and looked down at his stocking feet. They’d have to feed him, wouldn’t they? His socks answered, _of course, they didn’t lock you in here to die._ What if the tests came back that I have the illness after all? The socks answered, _relax, nobody on this ship has the illness._ Then why am I being quarantined if I have no possibility of having the illness? _Protocol,_ the socks answered, _you know how the military thinks._ Since when is the coast guard military? It’s supposed to be fun, and do rescues and cool stuff like that. _Uniforms,_ the socks were incredulous, _surely you’ve noticed the uniforms?_ I’ve been in here less than a day and I think my socks are talking to me, Árni sighed, better not tell Pétur that one. Árni lay back down to wait. After a while the socks asked, _when’s breakfast?_

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Three. Árni had all of his things that had been gathered from his barracks and brought to his cell. His uniforms and other coast guard-issued gear were not among them, and Árni gazed at the tiny pile of neatly stacked items. Jón the attendant had grudgingly sent someone to go to the rec room and see if there was a book about sheep for him to read. All that came back was a book called “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which was entertaining though faintly disturbing to him, and gave him no insight on real non-robotic sheep. He wondered whether post-apocalypse Iceland would look like the landscape in the book.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Five. The boom of the guns woke Árni. Groggily he could see that it was dark out, but had no further idea of the time. Again the guns boomed. Wide awake now, he covered his ears with his hands and prayed that it was just a whale. In the ominous silence that followed the gunfire, he could see in his mind’s eye the innocent blip disappearing from the dial.

He tried to shut out the vision by remembering his father, his stepmother and his sister, exploring ice caves together a few years prior. He remembered the vivid, uncanny blue of the ice, and his unease that it would crush him. The facets in the blue deepened, the ice beneath his feet turned to deep blue and so clear he could swear he was walking on water, and still Árni crouched beneath the star-filled sky, creeping along with his lantern, useless against the impenetrable blue surrounding him.

Some time later, caught between waking and sleep, he heard the footsteps coming through the quarantine area. Árni was instantly awake. Jón had a regular schedule for coming through and looking after the detainees, and had not deviated all week. He heard voices in the next cell, which had been empty, and then more loudly, “Two weeks.” Jón did not come and check on Árni or anyone further along, and shortly Árni heard his footsteps receding again.

Into the silence that followed, Árni could hear sobbing in the newly occupied cell. _Not a whale, then,_ he thought despondently. He scrubbed his face and hair with his hands in his chagrin at the memory. It was probably going to be too muffled to talk properly.

“Hi,” Árni said next to the wall. After a moment, the syllable was returned, not clearly, but decipherable in context. “It’s Árni, Árni Reynisson.” He tried to speak as clearly as he could.

“Árni?” It was a man’s voice.

“Yeah!” Árni’s delight was short-lived as the silence stretched to a minute, then two. “Halló?” he asked again.

“Go away,” the response came.

“I can’t?”

“Well, then you can-,” followed by an explicit string of cursing. _No problem with muffling then,_ Árni winced, _I heard that loud and clear._ He sat back down on his bed, feeling the silence stretch. He had no idea who might feel that strongly against him, or why. He’d always done his best to be amiable and friendly, and helpful. What had he done to anger this guy? His socks had no answers, they’d given up talking to him a few days prior.

Jón was not in a mood to linger when bringing Árni breakfast either. He grunted non-committally to Árni’s question about the guns in the night. The silence seemed more profound then ever between Jón’s attendances, but at least Árni didn’t hear any more sobbing.

He repeated to himself his mantra that he would leave this ship, and go find a hamlet where he could raise sheep and forget all about androids and refugees. He would never leave Iceland’s shores again, and he would teach his children why they too should never leave Iceland.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Árni dreamt he was back in Italy on holiday, walking along the beach under the palm trees. The sun was still hot in the late afternoon, the sand was still hot under his bare feet, and the palm trees’ long shadows still striped the beach. That girl was there too, walking beside him; what was her name? The smell on the air was not the intoxicating mix of surf and Italian cooking anymore, it was the stench of the rotting corpses littering the beach. Raffaela – that was her name, he remembered now – teased him about how easily his pale skin burnt. She flipped her thick long dark hair suggestively, took out a knife and told him she’d carve a galdrastafir stave into his skin to protect him from burning. He tried to run away but Raffaela’s arms and neck kept growing longer as she reached out toward him, and somewhere along the way her jaw had fallen off. Suddenly a stave made of fire burned in the air between them, and they both screamed, but Árni woke up. The sound of his scream was still echoing in the silence of his cell.

No one came to check on him as he lay there with his heart pounding, trying to remember the shape and detail of the stave before it faded from his memory. He’d had a friend once who was into that sort of thing, all that traditional stuff, maybe he’d ask her what it meant when he got back to Iceland. He rummaged in his things in the dark to find a bit of paper to draw the stave on. Why did everyone keep turning into distorted monsters in his dreams?

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Nine. Jón looked haggard through the mask of the hazmat suit as he brought the detainees their lunches, but only grunted when Árni asked him what was happening outside. As Jón trundled away, Árni remembered his resolve not to think about the outside world.  
  
“Árni.” The voice sounded dull through the wall.

Árni threw down the book he’d already read twice, leapt up and put his shoulder against the wall. He smoothed his unruly red hair off his ear so he could hear better. He really needed another haircut. “Yes, halló?” Never mind his hair, he hoped he could hear over the sudden pounding of his heart.

“It’s me, Kristján.” Árni struggled to remember who was named Kristján. “Kristján Einarsson,” he sounded more querulous now, “from the bridge.” Árni didn’t answer. The bridge of the Thor was a different lifetime and long ago. “Look, Árni, I’m sorry,” Kristján’s voice came back more strongly. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but I was really mad at you.”

“Why?” Árni gasped. “What was that all about?”

“Don’t you remember, you told me to watch your station. You never came back. I didn’t know what happened to you.”

“Right,” Árni nodded, dimly remembering handing off his headphones when the feeling of overwhelming suffering engulfed him and he had to escape, “yeah, sorry about that, but I-“

“They kept me there on your station after that. They just said you’d been reassigned. Your stuff was cleaned out of your berth.” Árni didn’t reply. He laid his head against the wall, not knowing what to say. Kristján was talking more loudly now. “You were down here the whole time. Hiding! Dammit, Árni!” He snorted loudly enough to be heard through the wall.

“I… I couldn’t…,” Árni broke off. Finally he sighed, “I’m sorry, Kristján, but I had to get out. I’m really sorry I stuck you with it. I’m really sorry, okay?” He winced as Kristján started swearing again at him, before lapsing into silence. Still Árni leaned against the wall. Eventually he ventured, “and the guns the other night?”

A long pause, then, “Yeah.” Another long pause. “I sort of hit the Chief Officer.”

“Did you say you _hit_ the Chief Officer?!”

“Yeah.” Árni could hear Kristján pacing around his cell. “Pétur was pretty good about it, but yeah, she was just going on like …like nothing happened.” The pacing stopped and it sounded like Kristján sat on his bed again. “So yeah, now I’m getting shipped home.”

“I _asked_ to go home,” Árni said, “I couldn’t stand what we were doing either. Those poor people.” Kristján didn’t reply. Árni stayed leaning against the wall, waiting and hoping for Kristján to talk to him again. After a while he heard the bed creak and the water working in Kristján’s bathroom.

Árni sat down again, and wondered how long it was until dinner. To pass the time, he pinched the pudge that was starting to form around his midriff, with the lack of activity and nothing to do but sleep and eat. Farmers probably lead an active life; he mused that he would have to get fit if he wanted to be a farmer. He got on the floor and tried to do sit-ups. He collapsed after doing about a dozen. He couldn’t do even that many push-ups. Kristján was sobbing again on the other side of the wall. Árni lay on his stomach on the floor where he’d collapsed, listening to the sobbing and the rushing sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. They were not in sync with one another.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Eleven. Only three more days, Árni thought as he lay in the early morning gloom. At least he though it was early morning. He tried to remember what his last meal was. Fish soup. That didn’t narrow it down much. “I want cheese.” He said it aloud, just to hear the sound of his own voice. “I want cheese,” he repeated.

He was startled by a thump on the wall from Kristján’s cell. “No!,” came the syllable very clearly through the wall. Árni queried Kristján, and the latter replied, “No cheese.”

“I’m sorry,” Árni said hurriedly, “can you not handle cheese? Are you lactose-intolerant or something?” It took a few attempts to get the words through the wall.

“No.” The bed creaked. “I’ve just had enough of it for one lifetime.” Árni didn’t have a reply for that, and silence enveloped them once more. After a while, he could hear Kristján get up and pace for a bit, before sitting back down. “I don’t know where you’re going after this, but I’ll probably have to go home to the farm with all those damn sheep.” A rhythmic noise, like he was kicking the bed. “All I wanted to do was get away from all those _stupid smelly sheep_ and the stupid smelly cheese.”

“Sheep?” Árni sat up. “You know how to raise sheep?”

A grunt. “You could say that.”

“Can you teach me?” Galvanised, he had his head and hand pressed to the wall. “Is it hard?”

“Are you insane? Why do you want to raise sheep?”

Árni bit his lip as he considered the question. “I’m just bored,” he lied. “And I don’t have anywhere to go, really.” That one was a truth. “And I thought…that I could just forget about the rash illness and the refugees and just forget about the rest of the world.” The words all came out in a rush. He hadn’t said them out loud before, and they sounded rather silly now. He was glad Kristján couldn’t see how red his face felt.

“I didn’t catch most of that,” Kristján replied, “but I think I get what you mean. You want to forget?”

“Yeah. Just forget it all.”

Kristján grunted. Árni endured the silence as best as he could, until he finally repeated, “Can you tell me how to look after sheep, Kristján?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Kristján grunted.

Árni managed twenty situps and eight solid pushups, muscles smarting from the unaccustomed exercise. Afterward, he stripped and examined his body in the mirror as he’d been instructed to do, looking for any telltale rashes. He looked down at his skinny freckled arms, imagining them corded with muscle, but shuddered and put his shirt back on when he thought of Raffaela’s tanned arms elongating into claws in his dream.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Thirteen. The guns had sounded twice more in these last days. Each time, Árni curled up on his bed and tried to block the sound of screaming in his head. _Almost time to go home,_ Árni tried to console himself, but then lay despondently when he realised he didn’t really have anywhere specific to go. His stepmother had become more distant since his father died, and his sister lived with her husband and baby in a tiny apartment in Reykjavik. Kristján hadn’t spoken to him again, about sheep or anything else.

“Hey Árni!” Árni was startled to hear Kristján’s voice through the wall, as though he knew Árni was thinking about him. When he responded, Kristján said, “You know what? Why don’t you go back to my family’s farm?” Árni was stunned, but Kristján continued, “I really don’t want to go back, but my sister could use the help. And if you want to learn about sheep, there’s no better place to learn.”

“Yes, that's fantastic! But wait, so you’re not going?”

“There’s nothing for me there,” Kristján said. It was the most animated Árni had heard him since he’d been quarantined. “My sister Guðrun runs the farm now, she knows how I feel about it. Maybe if I send _you,_ she won’t get as mad at me.”

“That makes sense, I suppose.” Árni thought about that for a moment. “Where is it? What’s the address?” He scrabbled around for a piece of paper and a pen.

Kristján laughed and gave him the name of a town, “it’s a few kilometres out of town, but close enough.” He laughed again. “You’ll smell the place before you see it, if the wind is blowing the right way.”

Árni looked at the paper he’d written the farm’s address on. Taking up most of the page was a drawing of the burning stave from his dream the previous week. On the other side was the letter he written to Pétur asking to be sent home. Now he had a home to go to, maybe. If Kristján’s sister would accept him. He folded the letter and address up carefully and tucked it back into his things. He called across, “I’ve never worked on a farm before, are you sure she’ll want me?”

“You’ll be fine. It’s easy,” Kristján chuckled to himself. _Serves him right for duping me into taking his spot,_ he thought. He called out, “let me give you her cellphone number. The networks might not be up, but you can try.” He dictated a number carefully, tapping each digit on the wall as well.

“Thank you, Kristján, thank you,” Árni gushed in a wave of emotion, “it means a lot to me.” He clutched the paper close to his heart, before tucking it carefully into his things. He managed thirty sit-ups and a dozen push-ups. _I’m going to be a farmer,_ he thought with satisfaction, _I’m really going to help on a real farm. One more day._

÷÷÷÷÷÷

The short woman with the breathing mask walked ahead of him, following the solid blond man into the building in front of them. Árni looked down at the snow at his feet. Her small feet had followed the trail the man’s boots laid down in the fresh snow. Fresh snow, devoid of any footprints, glinting in the weak sun. There were scores of other animal footprints in the snow just at Árni’s feet, but only their two boot prints went forward to the building. Árni couldn’t put his finger on just why that made him uneasy. He looked up as the woman spoke to him in accented Icelandic, gesturing for him to follow her. He couldn’t answer her, as he stood transfixed by what he could see past her in the building. Across the ceiling and down the walls were teeming semi-human figures writhing in agony and anger. Árni had lost sight of the blond man, but the woman stepped inside the building, walking down the sloping dirt floor into the waves lapping a few meters inside. Árni held up a cloth crudely painted with a stave, which seemed to shimmer slightly, between him and the woman. He could hear what sounded like a goose or duck honking loudly in the distance.  
÷÷÷÷÷÷

Day Fourteen. Árni woke up puzzled but not frightened. It was not one of the really horrifying dreams, it was just a weird dream this time. He’d forgotten it by the time he packed his things and waited impatiently for Pétur to come to his cell to finish the quarantine procedures and discharge him. He did not pack the book about android sheep.

As Jón ushered him out he thanked Kristján profusely and promised to do his best to help his sister on the farm.

“That’s fine,” Kristján responded, “enjoy your apocalypse. I might end up there anyway, we’ll see. Look after Guðrun.”


End file.
